Chapter 1, Part 3

You know, life re-he-he-he-heally sucks.
I am still sadly unemployed, though I actually am looking for a damn job. I’ve been watching Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil and Maury a lot recently; more than is good for my mental ill-health. I’ve also managed to rediscover Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Galaxy Angel (ah, sweet, sweet Galaxy Angel. How could I ever have made the mistake of forgetting about you?) Hell, even Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, Drawn Together and the various Law & Order series have made their way into my TV diet. And on top of that, I’m still watching the usual shows (Gundam Seed Destiny, That ’70s Show, Jeopardy, Mythbusters, etc.) and I’m working on 2 projects.
The first one, Akatsuki, is about…halfway through and half of the first chapter is already up for people who got lost to read if they have the time to spare and their insomnia is that bad. I’m not sure Akatsuki is going to make it to Fictionpress.com yet. The other one is still in pre-production since I still haven’t finished making the cast for it yet. About the only character I’ve decided upon right now is Captain Mackenzie Slade, the feisty, hot young sharpshooter captain of an as-of-yet-unnamed ship. That one will probably end up on Fictionpress.com and here. You know, as Akatsuki keeps going, it seems less and less weird sci-fi/shojo (like I envisioned it) and more like some sort of twisted, warped modern fantasy. Yet, the untitled second project of mine is decidedly more action/sci-fi than anything else, though one of the potential characters is a telekinetic.
The sad part is that I actually have regrets over leaving my last job at Ambergris. Not because I miss the work and not even because I miss the people. It all boils down to the fact that I miss a specific person in Ambergris. Now, I will admit I made some good friends there, like the trainers (Sarge) Joma and Martin, along with the people in my batch. Now, I can understand why I should miss a certain girl there a lot more than the others mainly because she was the one person there I felt I really became close to. She was, in my own words, the closest friend I’ve had in years. However, what makes me worry is that she’s the only one I miss. I miss her and with her birthday coming up, I’m hammering out whatever ideas I have to get a gift for her but with no money, that isn’t easy. Still, I can at least greet her and wish her well even if I might have pissed her off a bit the last time we talked, right? Sometimes I wish I didn’t have such a damn big mouth. The emotional field is to me what Waterloo was to Napoleon; I got caught poorly prepared and facing a defensive master (Wellington, if we continue the Waterloo analogy) in a battlefield that favors defense and I’m more oriented towards offense (in a way, that makes me Napoleon). I think defeat is a foregone conclusion for me in this one…
Well, enough about my problems. We move on now to the next part of Akatsuki.
Side Note:
While waiting for Blogger to load, I decided to upload this story to Fictionpress. Link here:
http://www.fictionpress.com/read.php?storyid=2224193

Chapter 1, Part 3:
Yagami Fuko stood with her back to the wind. She put down her bags for a moment and then took a moment to gather her thoughts. She wasn’t so sure about studying in Seven Angels but her close friend, Tohya Akira, had insisted that she do so. Fuko felt the wind grow stronger as it began to blow past her hair. The short, Catholic school girl skirt she was wearing started to fly around a bit in the wind as she considered things. She was just lucky that there wasn’t anyone around to see it happen. Not that she wasn’t capable of taking care of any fool that was too touchy. She picked up her bags again and proceeded to walk past the open gates. She had hoped to get a fresh start in Seven Angels, far from the secret of her past. She smiled. She was positive that, aside from her friend, there were no pieces of her past that lingered about the halls of the school. She was certain Akira would have warned her about them if she knew about them. Of course, Fuko realized that Akira may not have had familiarity with certain other elements of her past. Still, the chance of her past having caught up to her in that place was highly unlikely. With a deep breath, she decided to find Akira, settle into the place and hope for the best. She hoped to never have to be put into the situation that forced her to relive her dark high school days. In her heart, she hoped that she’d left those times behind her and moved on. She longed to. Sadly, she hadn’t even walked fifteen feet into the place before she saw someone that ruined the day for her and made her weak in the knees. She saw Kazama Yuki.
The two of them had history with one another that Fuko would rather have forgotten. Fuko clenched her fists and prepared for any possibility but she was certain it wouldn’t end in any sort of physical confrontation. Experience with Yuki’s preferred tactics taught her that. She looked at the masked girl and trembled. She knew the whole truth about Yuki and the nature of the games she played. She knew exactly what Yuki was capable of because it was Yuki who taught her how to fully tap into what she was capable of. She kept a good distance between the two of them and cautiously, she looked around to see if there were any other people around. She wanted to make sure she was safe from any sort of ambush as well as make sure that there weren’t going to be any witnesses if she managed to work up the nerve to do what had to have been done years before – rid the world of Kazama Yuki.
It was something that had to be done from the moment Yuki’s powers came into full view when Akatsuki ended. The two of them were both part of Akatsuki, though Fuko arrived on the scene later than Yuki did. She watched Miho and Yuki there and became close friends with Miho but she never trusted the twin. Even before the changes that she went through as a part of Akatsuki, changes that all of the girls involved experienced, Yuki had already shown a darker side to her, a domineering nature over her twin sister. Fuko understood well enough that Yuki was capable of anything given the appropriate motivation, though there was a dislike for being personally involved in physical confrontation. It was a contrast that she had with Fuko, who was more than willing to slip into a fight when the situation called for it. Something twisted was unleashed at that time; something that Fuko understood had to be stopped before it became too powerful. She’d experienced first-hand what Yuki was capable of, even if she was an inferior fighter in the physical arena. She wasn’t someone to be trifled with. None of those that were part of Akatsuki were to be trifled with but Fuko understood more than most that Yuki had potential to be far more dangerous.
“Yuki.” Fuko muttered to herself. “She’s here?”
Why yes. Fuko heard the response in her mind. I am.
“How long has it been, Yagami? Two? Two and a half years?”
Fuko frowned. “Not nearly long enough.”
“Oh come now. We’re old friends, aren’t we?”
“Miho and I were friends. Notice the past tense, Yuki.”
“Nonsense. You know the truth about my twin and I don’t you?” Yuki answered before she took a seat on a bench and beckoned Fuko to come closer to her. Besides, you and I were once close allies.
“You were in my head! You manipulated me, you manipulated Shizuka and you manipulated Yumi and all the rest!” Fuko objected as a rather sizable rock lifted up from the ground. She took a single step back as her rage began to build stronger. “You never gave us any choice in the matter.”
“Never gave you any choice? Don’t fool yourself, Yagami!” Yuki laughed as she brushed off the hilarity she found in Fuko’s statement. I never manipulated any of you. You all listened to me, joined me in my cause of your own volition. “All that you and the others needed was for me to come and convince you.”
“You’re insane. We never wanted to be accomplices to murder!” Fuko cried out as she placed herself into a fighting stance, the levitating rock still in the air.
Accomplices? You fool! Have you taken a knock on your head recently or have the physical stresses of your abilities finally ruined your fragile mind? Yuki laughed again as Fuko’s rage grew. “You did all the killing. Or don’t you recall? You killed them. You and Shizuka and Yumi and Miyu. As I recall, even your dearest friend had a hand in those deaths.” You have to admit, we ended Akatsuki with a bang.
Fuko fell silent and the stone dropped. She reeled back. Did you break your concentration? She clenched her fists even tighter while she closed her eyes. “You made us. You drove us to kill them.”
“I did no such thing. What you did to those people, you did on your own. Besides, I offered you and the others a reprieve from the guilt a long time ago.” Yuki said as she stood up and proceeded to walk away. She waved her hand as she walked, to show Fuko she considered the conversation over. “Only one of you took it. I guess, in a way, she was the smart one among you. She’s happy now. No memories of Akatsuki, no nightmares about those grisly murders. Had you taken it, I’m sure we could become close.”
“With or without my memories of Akatsuki, I wouldn’t trust you.”
So much rage. So much hatred. I wonder though, do you realize that I can do to you what I did to her at any time now? I’m sure you’ve gotten better at your ability as I have mine. Yuki turned her head just a little, enough for Fuko to see her smile. “I don’t need physical contact to re-write your memories now.”
She reeled back and then her nerve failed her. Fuko couldn’t go through with what had to be done.
I’ll be seeing you around. Yuki walked away, aware Fuko was unable to stop her. And her too. “By the way, I just thought of this and it is a little late for it but whatever happened to the others?” I know you’re here and the girl you spent a lot of time with is here somewhere too.
Fuko took a seat on a bench herself. It was the chance that she’d hoped to have but she failed at it dismally. She lost her nerve at the critical moment and Yuki was left alive to cause havoc once more. She’d let her go even though she had the perfect opportunity and she was sure that there was no way to implicate her in Yuki’s death if she had gone through. She knew terrible things were going to happen and she blamed herself for all of them. She stood up and tried to get the incident out of her mind. She was there and she had some idea of what Yuki was capable of and how she liked to operate. She could at least prevent the things from happening. It was a cold comfort but it was all she had at the time. She needed to find Akira.
The event known as Akatsuki changed her life, Yuki’s life and the lives of countless others. And, under Yuki’s guidance, words and encouragement, she and a handful of others ended Akatsuki with violence. Try as she might, she could never forget what had happened to her because of it. It had different effects for each of the girls that were lined up for it; Yuki was given mental abilities beyond those of normal humans and Fuko learned she had the ability to lift and move objects through sheer force of will. It was an ability she honed over time and has become more and more flexible since she first discovered it. She tried to lessen the use of it since the incident that she helped Yuki orchestrate and the rare instances when she used it involved total secrecy and no one was harmed. She had enough blood on her hands already. However, it was no secret, even to her, that she loved her ability and she was unable to let it go. She practiced with it as often as she could even though she knew that she had more power than she had let herself tap into. However, she feared that if she allowed herself to come to master her abilities, to maximize the power that it could offer her, she might become as corrupted as Yuki. The temptation to embrace her dark side and her powers was always great but she always had the specter of Yuki to remind her not to succumb to such thoughts. Inside her, she wondered if she could ever atone for all she had done; wash the blood from her hands. She was a killer, of that there was no doubt, but she was not a monster.
Fuko had a lot of blood on her hands. She’d taken lives that fateful night that ended Akatsuki. She’d crushed their hearts as they beat in their chests. She’d choked them slowly and watched as they squirmed and begged. She’d thrown them across rooms and into whatever lethal thing she could find and when she had nothing to work with, she threw them around until the impact slowly hammered them to death. The most horrifying part of it for her was that she enjoyed it. She enjoyed it more than any of the others, taking a sadistic glee as she watched her victims beg and plead during the few chances that she allowed them to. And then, as it dawned on her what a monster she had allowed herself to become, the monster she let Yuki awaken and use as a mindless killer, she wasn’t done yet. For several months afterwards, she realized that she had to rid the world of the monsters like herself, the terrors that came forth from Akatsuki. She hunted down the others that were involved in that slaughter. She tracked them down and killed them, her mind set on ridding the world of monsters like Yuki. In those instances too she found pleasure in killing them. She took a twisted enjoyment in stalking them and eventually ending their lives. She watched them turn into monstrous murderers, their powers had been misused. Yuki had evaded her hunt and she left only one other participant alive, mainly because she couldn’t remember who it was. She suspected she’d have to beat it out of Yuki when the time came. It was natural to assume that Yuki had done some sort of memory alteration since she was the only telepath that Akatsuki produced, outside of Miho, and Yuki was the stronger twin, by far. As for herself, she couldn’t die until she’d rid the world of the super-powered products of Akatsuki. Then, and only then, would she end her own life.
Fuko walked around until she caught sight of Tohya Akira, her old friend and someone she secretly loved. Tohya Akira was lovely beyond words to Fuko, though she could never work up the courage to admit it. Her short, solid black hair was cut just above the shoulders, neatly combed and seemed to go back into place after it was tussled or bounced. Her skin was fair, not as creamy or milky as most but it had a silkiness to it that seemed to give an impression of white rosebuds. She had a frail-looking figure but she was stronger than she looked, Fuko knew. She was nimble, slightly more flexible than other girls her age, a brighter light bulb than most as well and, from what she was told recently, Akira also started to refresh her skills in wing chun and jiu-jitsu. She stood there dressed in her usual attire: baggy fatigues, a pair of black leather boots, black tank top and a biker’s black leather jacket, complete with a pair of leather gloves that had red knuckles and a flaming skull emblem on the back of the jacket. Akira looked a lot like a tomboy in her get-up and that was the exact image she wanted to convey to others. She turned to see Fuko and smiled.
The two were old friends and Fuko’s memories of Akira reached too far back for Yuki to have had a hand in their creation. Besides, as intelligent and as cunning as Yuki was, even she didn’t have the kind of power needed to actually create a human being from scratch and force the world to accept her existence. It would have been foolish of Yuki to have tried, especially after what had happened to the third Kazama girl, Yuki and Miho’s younger sister Tsubame – who had infinitely more power than Yuki did, though she lost her life due to the excessive strains she put on her mind and body when she attempted to create an actual human being. As arrogant as Yuki was, she wasn’t foolish enough to attempt that. That, of course, was the reasoning Fuko used to assure herself Yuki wasn’t involved in any way with her closeness to Akira.
The two of them had a long history with one another, even though Akira was two years older than Fuko. Both of them recalled having met at some point early in their childhood years but neither one of them really knew how it happened. Akira was fairly certain it happened in the Tohya family’s Fukuoka mansion but Fuko felt that wasn’t completely correct. Akira had always convinced her parents to make arrangements such that Fuko was in the same school as her and the two spent as much time together as they could. Fuko, at times, vaguely mentioned that she recalled a third girl with them but couldn’t quite remember the name or what the girl looked like. Akira, for her part, claimed to have no recollection of that third girl. Akira had decided to learn martial arts sooner than Fuko did but the latter learned much faster, having had experience in fighting on the streets during the summers – things that Fuko preferred not to inform Akira of. The two of them had sparred often and exchanged points of view on a number of things at the same time; their talks ranged from the existence of destiny and free will, the purpose of meaning – which the two of them came to create a rather unusual answer for – and why chicken does seem to taste like everything. Fuko recalled that she spent hardly any time in any of the Tohya family’s mansions but she recalled Akira spent much time in the Yagami family home. It was when the Tohya family left for Italy that Fuko was drawn into Akatsuki and Akira developed her interest in motorcycles. That was comforting for Fuko since had Akira remained in Japan, she would likely have been drawn into the horror that was Akatsuki as well.
Akira’s eyes reflected Fuko’s appearance and the contrasts between them. Whereas Akira looked as if she was some sort of rebel, Fuko looked far more subdued, more clichéd. She wore a school uniform and it was easily the most noticeable thing about her – Fuko had the odd habit of wearing cosplay school uniforms wherever she went and aside from a purple and red kimono at her home in Fukuoka, a gown for formal events and several tomboyish ensembles Akira gave her, that consisted her entire wardrobe. Fuko had a very feminine, very delicate way of walking and, combined with the school uniforms, gave others an impression of poise. Her hair was an unusual variant of chestnut brown; she had a boyish haircut but had a few loose strands on the side and front to ‘add a little extra spice’, as she once put it. Her eyes were rather striking since the right eye was hazel while the left one had a mix of green and blue. Fuko said that it was some sort of genetic fluke or anomaly but neither of them really did the research to confirm that claim. She was built more muscular than the average Japanese girl but she was still feminine, still shapely and, despite her misgivings about their size, she had larger breasts than average. In reality, she was far more attractive than the average girl but something about her presence, her aura downplayed it all. In some ways, Akira assumed that Fuko actually liked things that way, though she also noted that she wasn’t afraid to use her sex appeal as a means of getting things that she wouldn’t likely have gotten otherwise.
That always made Akira smile.
“Hey, girl. You look a little off there, anything wrong?” Akira asked as Fuko approached.
“Nah, just had a run-in with something unpleasant, that’s all. No big thing.”
Akira smiled as she took one of Fuko’s bags. “Well, let’s get you settled in. I had you set up in the same dorm room as me. Thankfully, my old roommate, Tsubame, graduated already.”
“So,” she began as she stepped into the room. “Akira, anything about this place I should know?”
“I’ll fill you in on all the resident personalities a little later. Right now, I want to get you settled in so I can give you the grand tour of this place.” Akira answered. “And get a little sparring time in.”
“Yeah.” Fuko nodded. “I missed our sparring sessions too. A lot of fun. Very enlightening.”
“Remember our purpose of meaning bit? I think that was a classic.”
“I think it was along the lines of ‘the purpose of meaning is to continually seek the purpose of meaning’ or something like that.” Fuko thought as she closed the dorm door behind her. She felt as if a great load had been taken off her shoulders, just by being in Akira’s presence. “We were fifteen at the time. My memory of it is a bit hazy but I remember the two of us believing it made perfect sense at the time.”
Akira raised an eyebrow. “Well, it does!”
Fuko sighed. “You never change. You never change.”
The two then shared a laugh as they talked of the old times.
The calm before the storm, little Yagami. Fuko felt a cold chill as she heard it in her mind.